Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Elizabeth Hurd (center) dances with her son, Eli Hurd, 18 months, at the Blue Ridge PBS KidsFest in Salem. The pair, who are from Martinsville, joined friends for a girls' day out at the festival. Organizers said the free event drew at least 10,000 people.

Lashay Santana of Roanoke leads the cheers during a performance by David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," at the Blue Ridge PBS KidsFest in Salem.

Juggler Chris Taibbi entertains crowds at the Blue Ridge PBS KidsFest in Salem on Sunday.

Elizabeth Hurd had driven from Martinsville with three of her girlfriends, five kids and three strollers.

While the women's husbands were home watching football on TV, Hurd stood in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at Sunday's Blue Ridge PBS KidsFest, where the line to get into the Salem Civic Center snaked out of the building and into the parking lot.

"This is our big girls' day out!" she said. "We're going to Chuck E. Cheese next."

Hurd wasn't being facetious; she was just being frugal. The event, featuring such costumed PBS icons as Curious George, Arthur and Mr. McFeely, was free.

"The economy's so bad, especially where we live, that we can't afford to do anything else," said Hurt, who commutes two and a half hours round trip to attend classes at the Jefferson College of Health Sciences. "Things are so bad in Martinsville that all of our husbands have to commute somewhere else to work."

The standing room-only scene, sponsored by ITT Night Vision, was so stroller-packed that Hurd couldn't get anywhere near Elmo or Clifford the Big Red Dog, although the giant floor map of Africa did provide some elbow room for jumping around, and her son Elijah was able to dance the "Cupid Shuffle" off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.

Kate Foreman, the station's vice president of advancement, estimated the crowd at 10,000 to 15,000.

The activities were fairly low-tech and decidedly PBS: craft tables, face painting, paper hats. Junior Leaguers helped kids fill little baggies with healthy snacks.

"We wanted to do this to say thank you to the community" and to push the message of educational television, said Stephen Grieco, the station's foundation and marketing director.

"You never know, one day the president of the station might be standing in this room," added Foreman.

Or, just as likely, he or she might be waiting in line. Outside, festivalgoers who couldn't wait out the lines to get into the civic center got to pet a screech owl and baby alligator from Mill Mountain Zoo, and parents took snapshots of toddlers sitting behind the wheel of a Salem police cruiser.

Even a pile of gravel left over from the recent horse show was makeshift fodder for fun, as kids tired of waiting in line for the giant slide climbed up the rock instead -- a scene which Mr. Rogers surely would have approved.

"PBS is like my preschool; I love it," said Candice Osborn, who baby-sits for her two granddaughters weekdays and relies on the PBS shows to help her teach letters. "If it wasn't for PBS, I don't know what I'd do."

Osborn credited the huge turnout to the slumping economy and the break in the rainy weather of the previous few days. "I'm just thankful to see all these families out here doing healthy activities with their children," she said.

Radford University economics professor Basel Saleh weighed in on the stunning popularity of KidsFest as he kept an eye on his 14-month-old son, Sami, standing in his sock feet on the African map -- dancing on Madagascar.

"It could be that people are cutting back," he said. "But it's probably more like there's not that much to do in Roanoke with your kids -- there's the zoo and that's about it."